Fine writing enlivens seniors' tales in "A Place Called Canterbury"

"A Place Called Canterbury: Tales of the New Old Age in America"

by Dudley Clendinen

Viking, 371 pp., $24.95

Canterbury, an apartment tower and nursing wing for seniors, is a place filled with tales, and in the hands of Dudley Clendinen, former New York Times reporter and editorial writer, they are tales well-told.

The success of "A Place Called Canterbury: Tales of the New Old Age in America" undoubtedly comes from Clendinen spending enough time there to become trusted by Canterbury residents, who shared with him their life stories and their thoughts on death, dementia and the pros and cons of living in an all-amenities-included Tampa Bay geriatric-apartment building (residents' average age: 86). Even the details of sex after 70 (and 80) get an airing.

Clendinen got that access because of years spent there with his mother, a resident from 1994 to 2007. In 1998, his mother suffered a stroke and was moved into the nursing wing of Canterbury.

Clendinen's relationship with his mother, who no longer spoke after her stroke, serves as a constant backdrop to all the other material but is appropriately brought to the fore when Clendinen struggles with choices he must make on her care, whether to authorize withholding medications and other treatments, and how he will ultimately say his goodbyes.

Clendinen weaves together stories from the Greatest Generation; from the day-to-day activities and gossip of the Canterbury community; and from the aches, pains, worries and stresses that go along with aging.

The book's structure — vignettes from the various apartments played out against the ongoing story of his mother's care — provides the solid foundation for the book.

But it is Clendinen's brilliant writing that brings alive that generation: individual sagas from the Depression, how they met and carried on romances, what they did in World War II.

The depiction of life within a managed-care facility for the elderly is sometimes amusing, sometimes unbearably sad, but always engaging and informative.

Despite all the help from modern medicine that has allowed this generation to live longer than any other, bodies and minds break down. Clendinen's description of Alzheimer's takes you both inside a befuddled mind and within the Canterbury apartment where the sufferer's wife tries to cope with her husband's confusion, finally surrendering to his placement in the nursing wing after his elimination functions make him "a human-sprinkling system" and worse.

Given the age of the people at Canterbury, there's a lot in this book about their "leaky old sewer systems," about the deterioration of their bodies, about death. But overall, it's not a depressing book.

The key may be in Clendinen's insistence on seeing not the empty shell of his mother and her neighbors but on focusing on what was still there.

Even at the end of his mother's life, Clendinen clings to what remains alive, not what is dying: " ... as she began to dim and then to crumble, piece by piece over the last twenty-five years, I cherished what remained, until there was nothing, finally, but her eyes. Looking at me. Until they closed."

John B. Saul is the former deputy

Metro editor at The Seattle Times.

He teaches journalism part time

at the University of Montana.